The Real Dirt: Regenerating Soil Quality To Sustain Life

Farmer and rancher Gabe Brown, a 2012 NRDC Growing Green Award winner, is the owner of Brown’s Ranch in Bismarck, North Dakota. For over 15 years, Gabe has merged back-to-basics agrarian practices with innovative science-based sustainable farming techniques on his 5,400 acre diversified family ranch.

Daryl Lasilla, Montana Grain Farmer

Daryl Lasilla, grain farmer, grows buckwheat, barley, spelt, and lentils in just outside of Great Falls, in north central Montana. Soft-spoken and dedicated to organic production, Daryl has befuddled his neighbors growing conventional grain; especially when his organic spelt tops 4 1/2 feet high!

Biodiversity in Agriculture, edited by Paul Gepts

Exploring the cultural aspects of the development of agricultural ecosystems, the book also highlights how these topics can be applied to our understanding of contemporary agriculture, its long-term sustainability, the co-existence of agriculture and the environment, and the development of new crops and varieties.

The Ecology of Agroecosystems by John Vandermeer

Agroecology is the science of applying ecological concepts and principles to the design, development, and management of sustainable agricultural systems. The Ecology of Agroecosystems highlights a collection of alternative agricultural methodologies and philosophies and provides an interdisciplinary approach that bridges the sociopolitical and historical context of agriculture.

Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge by Gordon Edgar

Witty and irreverent, informative and provocative, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge is the highly readable story of Gordon Edgar’s unlikely career as a cheesemonger at San Francisco’s worker-owned Rainbow Grocery Cooperative. Cheesemonger is the first book of its kind—a cheese memoir with attitude and information that will appeal to everyone from serious foodies to urban food activists.

Whidbey Camano Land Trust

For more than 26 years the Whidbey Camano Land Trust has protected Whidbey and Camano Islands’ most important natural habitats, scenic vistas, and working farms and forests by the acquisition of land and conservation easements. The most recent project is the Three Sisters Family Farm.

Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson

Jo Robinson – not a next-door neighbor, but a neighbor nonetheless – lives on Vashon Island in the middle of Puget Sound. Until this year, Jo was known as a grass-fed beef expert for her research and collection of data about the nutritional value of beef raised on grass rather than grain. With the publication of Eating on the Wild Side, Jo turned her expertise to fruits and vegetables in order to “reclaim the nutrients and flavor we’ve lost” over millennia of natural selection and selective breeding.